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Nuclear Attacks
You can't hug your children with nuclear arms! But if you want to try anyway, read on: The Basics This article refers to game Version 1.2.28. Nuclear capabilities become available after the Strategic Bomber Unit is unlocked with the science "Nuclear Weapons". Here are the basics: *Strategic Bombers ("SBs") are the only method of nuclear attack; *SBs are built in a hanger, they take a significant amount of uranium to build and maintain. SB production will cause pollution around the city building them (potentially tipping off the enemy that the city is building SBs); *You can send multiple SBs in one attack but they cannot be accompanied by other units (i.e. other aircraft). Furthermore, SBs do not return after an attack, regardless of whether they are shot down or are succesful; *When a SB attack is sent, a world message will be automatically posted showing the attacking city, the target city, and the time the attack will hit. You cannot cancel SB atacks; *SBs can only attack cities; *All air defence buildings (i.e. SAM batteries and Air Defence Structures) in cities not allied with the attacker within a distance of 5 from the flight path of the SBs will deal damage to the SBs. In other words, if you drew an imaginary line from the attacking city to the defending city, every unallied city with anti-air structures within a distance of 5 from that line would deal damage to the SBs. ONLY air defence buildings deal damage to SBs. Ground units and aircraft will do nothing against SBs (this is the greatest advantage of SBs); *When the SB attack hits, air defence damage will be calculated. For example, if the SBs fly over two unallied cities with a lvl 8 Air Defence System then total air defence damage is 4000. SBs have 2500 hit points. This means you would need to send at least 2 Sbs (total hitpoints =5000) to get one SB through. *If SBs get through and hit the target city then the SBs will deal damage to ground forces and navy, structures, and population. Succesfull SBs will cause a significant amount of pollution at the center of the blast (around 800). The pollution effect will decrease with distance from the epicenter of the blast. Strategy While SB attacks are useful, they are not very effective unless paired with a campaign of follow-up ground/air/naval attacks and part of an overall strategy to crush and demoralize the enemy. When it becomes possible to research Nuclear weapons a country will have to decide whether to go for broke researching SS part technologies or taking a significant (and potentially game-losing) detour to research Nuclear weapons. The strategy a country takes will depend on the competition. If two countries are in a dead heat and equal in science, then researching Nuclear weapons is not a good idea. This would result in the other country getting significantly ahead in the space race technologies. If a country is in the running to win the space race then they are best advised to finish researching all spaceship ("SS") components before researching Nuclear weapons. At this point you may be asking yourself "why don't I research Nuclear weapons and just nuke the other countries into oblivion so they can't build a spaceship?" Good question. The answer is that SBs are not really all that effective against a smart enemy who is well prepared. read on: Effectiveness SB attacks are effective against individual cities if a country can build enough to get a significant amount of SBs through enemy and non-allied air defence. However, this is easier said than done. Late in the game it is almost impossible to hurt an advanced enemy with jet bombers due to the extreme quantities of jet fighters the enemy will have built up. However, SBs are not affected by fighter aircraft or ground fire, so they can be used to soften up the troops in a key enemy city before anti-structure ground forces hit. Just make sure you time attacks to hit 1 second after SBs hit, otherwise the enemy city could send its troops away a few seconds before the SB attack, and recall them after the SB attack to arrive just in time to defend against your ground forces. SBs can also be used as a last ditch attempt to halt enemy spaceship construction. In the end-game, spaceports that are constructing a spaceship will be so well defended that it is almost impossible to halt the SS construction process via ground or conventional air attack. This is where SBs can come in handy. depending on where the enemy has placed their spaceport and how many SBs you can build, you may be able to get enough SBs through to the spaceport to inflict damage on SS parts. If enough SBs get through, they may be able to destroy enough SS parts to halt and reset the spaceship construction process. Pollution SBs will cause a significant amount of pollution if they hit the target. However, don't hang your hat on pollution. While pollution is very destructive, it can be effectively countered if enemy cities are close together and have high level recycling centers. A sucessful SB attack may cause 800 pollution to an enemy city, but that could go down to 300 in a matter of hours if the enemy has enough recycling centers in nearby cities. Defending Against SB Attacks The best way to defend against SB attacks is to concentrate all cities in a country in a small geographic area and max out air defence structures in all cities. Place your Spaceport as far away from the enemy as possible with as many friendly cities between your Spaceport and the enemy as possible. Look out for enemy military cities that all of a sudden start becoming red or black on the ecological map- they might be producing SBs. If you are very close in a spacerace with another country, they will probably not research nuclear weapons until they are finsihed all SS technology. However, look out for countries far enough behind in science that they can't win the spacerace, but ahead enough to research nuclear weapons and nuke you. Conclusion In summary, SBs suffer from numerous disadvantages: they come late in the game; pollution does not do much if the enemy is geographically concentrated and has high level recycling centers; they take a ton of uranium (a very scarce resource) to build and maintain; you will need a lot of them to get past air defence. That being said, SBs can come in handy to destroy key enemy deposits that are heavily defended (keep in mind these deposits will likely have spare workers in nearby cities ready to recolonize the deposit 5 minutes after your SBs hit!). Alternatively, if you can build enough SBs you might be able to destroy enough enemy spaceship parts in their spaceport to halt SS construction. Be sure to carefully calculate how many air defence structures your SBs will be flying over, and make certain you have enough of them to get through. good luck! Category:War Category:Strategy Category:Tactics